The Biden administration has a problem with cronyism.
Despite proudly proclaiming to have the highest ethical standards of any administration in history, the Biden White House continues to blur ethical lines when it comes to friends and family. Recent reports estimate a dozen or more relatives of administration members were given government positions. But that’s small potatoes compared to the gift that was dropped into the lap of a former Biden-Harris transition team member.
According to the Washington Examiner, the Biden administration overlooked contenders in a contract bidding process to award Family Endeavours – an organization run by a former Biden-Harris transition leader Andrew Lorenzen-Strait – an $87 million dollar ICE contract. The job involved overseeing an operation to prepare 1,200 hotel beds to house migrant families for three days at a time in Arizona and Texas.
Even the details sound shady. Good thing someone was paying attention.
“A high-ranking ICE official in Washington, D.C., on June 2 sent his colleagues a message obtained by the Washington Examiner that stated Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, the senior director for migrant services and federal affairs at the nonprofit Family Endeavors, was denied the proper clearance to work on the contract he had secured for his organization months earlier,” the Examiner reports.
It’s evident that Lorenzen-Strait has a conflict of interest here. One which permanently prevents him from working on federal contracts that he influenced while serving as a federal employee.
And he did have influence.
Lorenzen-Strait worked at ICE for more than a decade. His last responsibility? Overseeing detention centers. After joining the Biden-Harris transition team, he vetted political appointees at Health & Human Services (HHS), the department that cares for unaccompanied migrant children stopped at the border. Finally, Lorenzen-Strait was on the DHS policy team!
About as insider as it gets.
“References to Lorenzen-Strait in a DHS contract email raises questions about the integrity of the award and it might be another example of how the revolving door and friends in high places sways government decisions and deals,” says Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project On Government Oversight.
Right on, Scott Amey – it raises a lot of questions.
Andrew Lorenzen-Strait has been banned from all future ICE contracts.
